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IMT1.1> STATICS 01 AJtKIUCA. 






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THE 



AGE OF CLEVELAND 



COMPILED LARGELY FROM 



CONTEMPORARY JOURNALS AND OTHER ORIGINAL 
SOURCES 



And Edited for the Benefit of PosteHty 
BY ^ 

HAROLD FULTON RALPHDON 




NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES & BROTHER 
1888 



iiiu^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1888, BY 

Frederick A. Stokes & Brother. 



Edward O. Jenkins' Sons, 

Printers and Stereotypers, 

20 North William St., New York. 



TO 



BIG FRED AND LITTLE FRITZ 

IS de:dioa.tkd. 



PREFACE. 



It is no unusual occurrence for some 
antiquarian, after the lapse of several cen- 
turies, to seek to construct an historical 
review of a past age by means of its con- 
temporary journals, prints, novels, maga- 
zines, and other similar literature. The im- 
perfections of such a method of historical 
research are manifold and various, of which 
the first to suggest itself is the author's 
inevitable lack of personal familiarity with 
that period which it is his purpose to 
chronicle. He is, therefore, though actu- 
ated by the most impartial motives, liable 
to exaggerate the importance of trifles and 
underestimate the value of more important 

(V) 



vi PREFACE. 

events accordingly as they are magnified 
or minimized by the Hterature of the period. 
Moreover, the authorities which such an 
historian fmds at hand are not always of the 
highest order. In spite of that optimistic 
view of the survival of the fittest it is un- 
fortunately true that society is occasionally 
very indifferent to its contemporary litera- 
ture and ofttimes injudicious in its preserva- 
tion, not infrequently permitting that to be 
lost which would be of incalculable value 
to the historian of the future. It is scarcely 
possible to overestimate the loss which the 
literature of Greek social, political, and lit- 
erary life suffered in the destruction of the 
plays of Agathon. Many perplexing phases 
of the influence of the sophists in politics 
would be capable of explanation, the final 
development of dramatic art more easily 
traced, and additional light thrown on sev- 
eral obscure passages in the comedies of 



PREFACE. Vii 

Aristophanes, had the age of Pericles been 
less indifferent to the productions of its 
great contemporary, the earliest representa- 
tive of the fictional school of tragedy. 

Although the art of printing has, by 
multiplying the number of copies of a 
book, materially lessened the chances of 
its destruction, the root of the evil remains 
unchanged. Every age disregards the 
lessons furnished by the past and exhibits 
equal negligence in failing to select and 
preserve such of its current literature as 
will convey to posterity a vivid and accurate 
impression of its varied and multiform life. 

There is, moreover, another circumstance 
peculiarly calculated to be a fruitful source 
of error to whoever undertakes in the future 
to write a history of the present age. Con- 
temporary journalism must necessarily sup- 
ply the principal materials for such a his- 
tory, and it is scarcely reasonable to expect 



viii PREFACE. 



posterity to be familiar with the various oc- 
cult methods of advertising which are such 
a prominent feature of that class of litera- 
ture. Yet io^norance in this direction must 
lead to mistakes not only laughable, but 
positively injurious to the reputation of my 
own times. I have often, for example, re- 
flected upon wdiat disagreeable conse- 
quences would ensue if posterity should 
be unacquainted with the present use of 
the reading notice. The future student of 
our history might naturally conclude from 
the prominence given to the discussion of 
the merits of different proprietary articles, 
and the editorial comments on the same, 
that the present age is far more interested 
in soap than religion, and in perfumery 
than in politics. 

Again, journalism presents the news of 
the day in a compact and abbreviated form, 
furnishing a mere outline which the intelli- 



PREFACE. IX 



gent reader can accurately fill in fi-om his 
personal familiarity with all the details of 
current events. Such an outline is admi- 
rably suited for present needs, but is mar- 
red by the serious fault, that it is apt to 
convey a totally wrong opinion to those 
readers who have no acquaintance with such 
details. A parallel case is to be found in 
those sketches of distinguished citizens 
which adorn the columns of many of our 
most popular dailies. To the personal 
friends of the subject of the sketch they 
convey the impression of a very accurate 
likeness, whereas a total stranger would be 
in doubt whether they were intended as a 
portrait of a district attorney or of the great- 
est showman on earth, and might fall into 
the pardonable error of imagining that a 
citizen of Bridgeport had been elected to 
the head of the criminal department of the 
city of New York. 



X PREI-^ACE. 

For these considerations I have deemed 
it advisable to write a history of my own 
times. One purpose in so doing, is to sup- 
ply what may be termed the res gestce of 
contemporaneous events. I have, in other 
words, endeavored to impartially record 
those circumstances which are regarded as 
trite or trivial, by contemporary journalism, 
and accordingly omitted entirely. 

The book is therefore in no sense de- 
signed for my contemporaries, who will no 
doubt find it a tedious chronicle of events 
so familiar as to be wholly without interest; 
but exclusively for posterity, whom I am 
sanguine enough to expect to be grateful 
for these exact memorials of an age which 
seems tame enough to us, but which wnll 
no doubt be magnified into great import- 
ance through the telescopic vision of time. 

I have not deemed it necessary to enu- 
merate the various cyclopedias, biographies, 



PREFACE. xi 

handbooks, and other vohimes of statistics, 
not to mention pamphlets, reports, alma- 
nacs, and similar paper-covered literature 
which I have consulted in the preparation 
of the present work. It Is sufficient to say 
that I have drawn larg-ely for my informa- 
tion upon our great dailies and current 
periodicals, so that it may be truthfully 
said to be brought down to date. 

I have, however, deemed it of import- 
ance to explain a rule of syntax which has 
been adopted. As I have compiled this 
volume for the exclusive benefit of poster- 
ity, the secondary tenses are obviously ap- 
propriate in chronicling events for such a 
constituency. As it is my intention, how- 
ever, to publish my book at once, it seemed 
equally imperative to employ the primary 
tenses. The necessity for choosing be- 
tween these two alternatives caused me no 
little anxiety, for no one stands in greater 



Xii PREFACE. 



awe of the critical spirit of the age than do 
I. Even such insicrnificant circumstances 
as blunders in punctuation, and typograph- 
ical errors, are apt to lead to serious con- 
sequences. The omission of a comma has 
been known to nullify a statute, and the 
unauthorized insertion by a printer of a 
vowel-point in a Hebrew noun is sufficient 
to jeopardize a whole system of theology. 
Grammatical errors are likely to so mo- 
nopolize the attention of the critic that he 
can devote but scant space to the review 
of the book itself If the present age is 
so critical, it is appalling to think what it 
will be in the future. My perplexity was 
naturally great, for I desired to avoid hav- 
ing my book irretrievably condemned for 
what w^ould be at the best but a mere fault 
of style, and could in nowise affect the 
matter. After no little consideration, I 
concluded to uniformly employ the primary 



PREFACE. Xlll 

tenses. Such a rule of syntax is eminently 
suited to my contemporaries, while it can- 
not fail to lend an air of realism to the vol- 
ume when it comes to be perused by pos- 
terity. I trust this frank explanation will 
serve to disarm the hostility of any critic 
who may be inclined to question the pro- 
priety of my syntax on the ground that the 
primary tenses have been employed to de- 
scribe events which must necessarily be- 
long to the past, w^hen my book obtains 
that constituency for which it is specifically 
desio-ned. 

o 

I would simply add, in conclusion, that 
I have at all times tried to assume a neu- 
tral position on the questions w^hich I have 
attempted to discuss, and although it has 
been necessary in a few instances to dis- 
close my personal convictions on some 
particular subject, I have earnestly en- 
deavored to make no statement which I 



XIV PREFACE. 

myself have not, as far as it was possible, 
carefully verified, and have conscientiously 
avoided creating a false impression, not 
only by a positive violation of the truth, 
but by guarding against that tendency to 
exaggeration which is such a serious fault 
in the historian. 

Harold Fulton Ralphdon. 

Groonkay, N. Y., February, 1888. 



CONTENTS. 



FAGB 

The General Condition of Politics, . . 3 

The State of Science, 45 

The Moral, Industrial, and Social Condi- 
tion OF the Age, 73 

Literature and Law, iii 



THE GENERAL CONDITION OF 
POLITICS. 



THE GENERAL CONDITION OF 
POLITICS. 

Before entering into any detailed dis- 
cussion of the principles and condition of 
the political parties of the present age, I 
have deemed It prudent to anticipate and 
correct certain errors Into which posterity- 
might possibly fall from a perusal of our 
contemporary literature. 

For this reason I desire to state at the 
outset that Grover Cleveland was Presi- 
dent of the United States during the pe- 
riod covered by this chapter. I make the 
statement with considerable reluctance, for 
I am of the opinion that posterity, upon 
reading it, will be Inclined to seriously 
question my reliability as a historiographer 
of my own times. For it requires no effort 

(3) 



THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 



of the imao^Ination to foresee the indio^nant 
and emphatic protest which this statement 
will elicit a century hence from every pure 
and simple-minded patriot who is familiar 
to any extent, either by personal examina- 
tion or by tradition, with many of our con- 
temporary journals. " What ! " such a 
one will exclaim; "this incarnation of 
guilt and incapacity, this corrupt politician, 
who never said a wise thing, and always 
did a foolish one, the successor of the 
blameless Washington and the martyred 
Lincoln ! It is preposterous ! The parti- 
sanship of the American people could never 
have so mastered their patriotism as to 
have permitted his election. There is as- 
suredly some mistake." 

Yet, incredible as it is, I am compelled 
to reaffirm the statement that Grover 
Cleveland is, to the best of my information 
and belief. President of the United States 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 5 

in the year of our Independence the one 
hundred and twelfth. I cannot make the 
statement absolute, because I was not 
present either at the official canvass of the 
votes of the various electoral colleges by 
the joint Houses of Congress, or at the 
ceremony of inauguration. But I have 
seen certain acts, messages, and public 
documents which purported to be signed 
by him in the capacity of Chief Magistrate. 
I have also heard him frequently alluded 
to as President, and occasionally spoken 
of with respect. 

I have likewise deemed it advisable to 
make the statement that Grover Cleveland 
did not bear arms against the government 
of the United States in the years 1861-65. 
It is not within the province of the impartial 
historian, whose function is simply to re- 
cord external events, to enter into any 
analysis of the finer motives of human con- 



THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 



duct, and determine whether Grover Cleve- 
land's loyalty during these years was act- 
uated by prudence or patriotism. But, as 
a considerable portion of the current press 
has been neMIo-ent in observinor the meta- 
physical distinction between act and inten- 
tion — a species of negligence which cannot 
mislead those who are familiar with all the 
facts — I have considered it prudent to thus 
enlighten posterity, lest future generations 
might confound moral culpability with 
overt guilt, and imagine that Grover Cleve- 
land and Jefferson Davis were one and the 
same person. • 

It is also appropriate to state in this 
connection that Grover Cleveland was not 
connected with any of the Ku Klux raids 
in the South during the period of recon- 
struction. To this affirmation I am able 
to bring the irresistible support of very 
strong circumstantial evidence. A cursory 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. / 

examination of a map of the United States, 
supplemented by a careful study of the 
facilities of transit between Buffalo and 
Louisiana during the time of the existence 
of that marauding organization, will prove 
that the time consumed in travelling be- 
tween these two points would have been 
so great as to make It an impossibility for 
a citizen of Buffalo to have been present 
at any one of these raids without rendering 
himself conspicuous by his protracted ab- 
sence from home. I am therefore con- 
vinced that in this instance Grover Cleve- 
land can successfully prove an alibi, and I 
may add that in this opinion, a considera- 
ble number of my contemporaries who have 
impartially examined the facts in the case, 
heartily concur. 

It may, however, relieve In a measure 
the mortification of posterity to learn that 
Grover Cleveland was, after all, only de facto 



THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 



President of the United States, and that 
ample evidence of the worth and incom- 
parable superiority of our de jicre President 
during this same period will be found in 
not a few of our daily and weekly journals. 
For the benefit of posterity I will explain 
these two terms. A de facto President is 
one who receives a majority of electoral 
votes. A de jure President is one who 
would have received such a majority, had 
not the will of the people been defeated by 
the action of a Returning Board, an un- 
timely speech of a clerical constituent, or 
some other untoward or unforeseen cir- 
cumstance wholly incommensurate with the 
dignity of a presidential election. The du- 
ties connected with the two offices are also 
dissimilar. Those of a de facto President 
are to conduct legislation in the present; 
those of a de jui^e one to shape politics in 
the future. 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 9 

For fear the point might be raised here- 
after, I have deemed it advisable to state 
in this connection that up to the present 
month (February, 1888), no question has 
been raised as to whether our de jure 
President did not work a forfeiture of his 
office by visiting England and France dur- 
ing the present year. Such an extra-terri- 
torial residence would seem to be contrary 
to the letter, at least, of the law forbidding 
the President to depart from without the 
jurisdiction of the United States during his 
official term. I am not a lawyer myself, 
and cannot therefore determine the ques- 
tion from a strictly legal point of view. I 
would, however, suggest that, had any 
sufficient grounds existed, the many enemies 
of our de jure President would have been 
quick to insist upon his removal from of- 
fice, and that their failure to do so furnishes 
strong presumptive evidence of the ab- 



10 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

sence of all such grounds. Moreover, the 
example of Mr. Tilden can perhaps be 
pleaded as a precedent, for he made a pro- 
tracted visit to Europe after his inaugura- 
tion in the preceding March. 

I am sincerely solicitous for the sake of 
the honor of my country, that posterity 
may find in this suggestion of the distinc- 
tion between de J2ire and dc facto an effi- 
cient means of escaping from the awkward 
and humiliating predicament of acknowl- 
edging Grover Cleveland as the twenty- 
second President of the United States. I 
am not sure but that it has occurred to 
many of my fellow-countrymen equally 
patriotic with myself, but I believe I am 
the earliest to elevate it to the dignit)- of a 
principle. It is surely infinitely better 
founded than a thousand and one other 
legal distinctions, and certainly no more 
difficult to be comprehended b)- a human 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. II 

than many of the decisions of the highest 
courts of record in the various States of 
the Union. i 

I am also anxious to anticipate and cor- 
rect another error into which posterity 
may possibly fall. There was no civil 
war in the United States in the year 1887. 
I have deemed it advisable to make 
this statement, because I opine that the 
future historian of our country, when he 
comes to that passage in our history which 
is known as the Veto of the Pension Bill, 
and the Order to return the Rebel Flags, 
and reads the fierce denunciatory curses 
which made historic Harlem ring, the bel- 
ligerent resolutions of G. A. R. Posts, and 
the angry threats of old war Governors, 
will impatiently turn the subsequent files 
of these same journals in order to learn the 
details of that bloody and fratricidal strife 
which he confidently expects was the log- 



12 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

ical consequence of such an universal out- 
burst of indignant patriotism. It is to re- 
lieve the perplexity of such an one that I 
make the definite, unqualified assertion in 
this place, that there was no civil war in 
the United States in the year 1887, al- 
though this is of course intended as no in- 
timation that the circumstances did not 
furnish an adequate castes belli. I must, 
moreover, confess that I have never had 
it satisfactorily explained to me how a 
repetition of the terrible years of 1861-65 
was averted. In the absence of any other 
explanation, I would venture to suggest 
the following, which, although candidly 
admitted to be of my own personal inven- 
tion, must be understood as founded upon 
a careful consideration of all the facts 
in the case. The McGlynn matter, the 
Queen's Jubilee, the opening representa- 
tion of the Fall of Babylon, all providen- 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 1 3 

tially occurred at this juncture, and happily- 
served to relieve the overcharged feelings 
of the nation as a lightning-rod attracts to 
itself the bolt which threatens destruction 
to the house, and dissipates its deadly fluid 
into the ground. 

Having thus disposed of certain errors 
concerning contemporary politics, into 
which posterity might naturally fall had 
the foregoing explanations been omitted, 
I will proceed to a brief review of the 
principles of the political parties of the 
present age. 

The two great parties are the Republic- 
an and Democratic,* although there is a 
third, commonly called Mugwump. This 

* In using the words Democratic and Republican, I 
must be understood as referring only to the Simons 
Pure of each party. I have not deemed it necessary 
to record the views of those Moderates who are being 
constantly ground to pieces between the upper and the 
nether mill-stones of the Extremists. 



14 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

last party has no machine, and is conse- 
quently expected to have no principles. It 
is therefore extremely difficult to define its 
exact position In municipal and national poli- 
tics. A Mugwump may perhaps, however, 
be defined as a Galilean in politics, who 
is constantly irritating the Ultramontanes 
of his party by voting 7ion placet at Repub- 
lican Primaries. It is in fact the party of 
dissent, and regards with a curious lack of 
reverence many of the most cherished tra- 
ditions of both parties, notably those which 
relate to the Importance of the machine and 
the intimate and intricate connection be- 
tween good government and a partisan 
civil service. 

The vital distinction between the Re- 
publican and Democratic parties is that the 
former insists that the war is not 3'et over, 
the latter that It has never taken place. I 
cannot emphasize too strongly the necessity 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 1 5 

for posterity familiarizing itself with this 
distinction. If it is ignored the substantial 
foundation for much of the virulence of the 
current press of the period can never be 
appreciated. For it would otherwise seem 
both absurd and illogical that two parties 
who are so perfectly agreed that the 
Chinese must go, that seventy-two cents 
make a dollar, that the laboring man is 
entitled to fifty-two half holidays during 
the year, and that eight hours' work de- 
serves a ten-hours' wage, besides exhibit- 
ing equal unanimity on various other ques- 
tions, should nevertheless be so bitter to- 
ward one another that a member of one 
party Is never mentioned in the official or- 
gans of the other, except In terms of un- 
measured contempt, and his memory when 
dead, accorded less respect than Is usually 
given to that of a valuable setter or favorite 
race-horse. But such mutual hostility is 



l6 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

perfectly intelligible to us, as it will be to 
posterity, if that vital distinction between 
the two parties which has been noted 
above, is only kept constantly in view. 

One of the most distinctive principles of 
the Republican party is that of protection. 
Not only does it insist that home manu- 
factures need to be protected against the 
pauper labor of Europe, but advocates with 
equal vehemence and persistency, that the 
negro requires protection against his for- 
mer master; a disunited North protection 
against a solid South ; the people of the 
United States protection against a Demo- 
cratic President ; the President protection 
against his own party ; the people of the 
State of New York protection against a 
Democratic Governor ; the liquor-dealer 
protection against the Prohibitionist, and 
the Prohibitionist protection against the 
Personal Liberty League. I am quite con- 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 1/ 

vinced, from such examination as I have 
been able to make, that no other party, 
either past or present, was ever more be- 
neficently paternal in its purpose and its 
scope. 

Another principle equally Republican in 
its character, although of more recent origin, 
is that of political entail, or that a man is 
entitled to a nomination because he is the 
son of his father. The genesis of this doc- 
trine is not to be traced, as has been im- 
puted in certain hostile quarters, to a con- 
fession of paucity of candidates possessing 
sufficient merit of their own to entitle them 
to the honor of a nomination, but to that 
great principle of the party that the war is 
not yet cv^er. The most ordinary conser- 
vatism would naturally influence any party 
to select in such a critical state of affairs, 
only those candidates whose loyalty is as- 
sured beyond all question, not only by pred- 



1 8 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

ilections of a personal nature, but by that 
great principle of heredity which science 
has demonstrated to be the controllinof 
force in human conduct. 

Yet, however great may be the differ- 
ence between the two parties on certain 
domestic issues, they are nevertheless in 
complete accord in regard to what should 
constitute an appropriate foreign policy. 
Both unqualifiedly approve of Home Rule 
for Ireland. Perhaps of the two the par- 
ticular plank in the Republican platform 
Avhich touches on this subject is a trifle 
more unequivocal, for it mentions Glad- 
stone and Parnell eis nomiiiibiis, whereas 
they are not specified at all by name in the 
corresponding plank of the Democratic 
platform. This is naturally a matter of 
just pride to every Republican, and simple 
justice requires it to be said that it is per- 
haps due to the direct or indirect influence 



GEXERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. I9 

of our de jiu^e President over this party, 
who, though he has been charged at times 
by his enemies with indifference to events 
at home, is conceded by both friend and 
foe to be unequalled at flying the Ameri- 
can eagle in foreign affairs. 

In order to explain the raison d'etre of 
what follows in this chapter, it becomes 
necessary to violate that principle of strict 
neutrality which I have conscientiously 
striven to uniformly observe elsewhere 
throughout this volume. By reason of my 
party affiliations, I am bound to believe 
that another term of Democratic rule, with 
its systematic indifference to the import- 
ance of G. A. R. Posts, and unseemly des- 
ecration of Decoration Day by fishing 
excursions, can only terminate in the over- 
throw of all constitutional government, the 
successful establishment of the Confeder- 
acy, and the restoration of slavery. Re- 



20 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

cent events have caused me to view with 
unfeigned alarm the constandy increasing 
chances of the election of a Democrat to 
the Presidency in 1888. It is in view of 
such a catastrophe that I have been influ- 
enced to write the remainder of this chap- 
ter, thinking that posterity might feel a 
melancholy interest in the examination of 
the Constitution of our one and indivisible 
Republic before it had been split up into 
innumerable petty States. I have not, 
however, deemed it necessary to literally 
transcribe the various provisions of our 
Constitution, or furnish a detailed de- 
scription of our present form of govern- 
ment. I will not admit, even to myself, 
that the sectional hate of the Solid South, 
who, though former slaveholders, are still 
Americans, will ever attain such depth of 
intensity and malignity, so that when the 
sad day of its supremacy arrives, it will 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 21 

endeavor to systematically obliterate all 
memorials of the past. It is scarcely prob- 
able that the various volumes containing 
copies of our Constitution will, immediately 
after the final success of the rebel arms, be 
burned by the common hangman in the 
city of Richmond, and any allusion to the 
past forbidden under severe penalties, as 
a toast to the exiled Stuarts, in the days 
of the Commonwealth, sent a loyal cavalier 
with short shrift to the headsman's block. 
I have deemed it reasonably certain that 
copies of our Constitution, surviving the 
dismemberment of our Union, will be 
easily accessible for the inspection of pos- 
terity, and that a general recollection of 
our present form of government will be 
transmitted from loyal sire to loyal son. 
But I desire to call the attention of poster- 
ity to that unwritten constitution, that 
higher law, of which no exact memorials 



22 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

exist, and the memory of which even tra- 
dition cannot be expected to preserve when 
State Sovereignty has become supreme, 
and Federalism a mere dream of the past. 
First of all, I wish to refute a slander 
which has obtained a wide circulation in 
our day, and may possibly find an echo in 
the sounding corridors of time. It is a 
standing reproach among European nations 
that the United States is wholly indifferent 
to the class of foreiorners which she w^el- 

o 

comes to her shores, and makes no dis- 
tinction between what would and would 
not form a desirable addition to her popu- 
lation. The orio^in of such a serious mis- 
statement may be readily traced to that 
ignorance, prevalent in all monarchical 
countries, of the high value placed by us 
on our Elective Franchise, which rests 
not upon intelligence or thrift, but upon 
simple citizenship. It is therefore only 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 23 

logical that the immigration of all who pos- 
sess capacity for citizenship, even though 
it be in an imperfect and embryonic state, 
should be welcomed as a substantial addi- 
tion to our population, while the presence 
of those who lack this important qualifica- 
tion should be distinctly discouraged. That 
this is no fanciful distinction of my own, 
invented to excuse what has been fre- 
quently urged as a reproach upon my 
mother country, is fortunately capable of 
easy demonstration. For how else is it 
possible to explain the policy of extermin- 
ation adopted toward the Indians, or the 
stringent laws forbidding the immigration 
of the Chinese ? It is therefore appropri- 
ate to state at this point that both the In- 
dian and the Chinese are regarded as ex- 
cepted from all the benefits conferred by 
that clause of the Constitution which pro- 
vides that no State shall " deprive any 



24 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

person of life, liberty, or property without 
due process of law, nor deny to any person 
within its jurisdiction the equal protection 
of the law." I am especially anxious that 
posterity should note this exception, as it 
affords the only possible explanation of the 
paradox that a people so sensitive to con- 
stitutional rights as to resent the indigni- 
ties of prison clothing, discipline, and fare 
to which Mr. O'Brien was subjected at Tul- 
lamore Jail, should view with apathetic un- 
concern the outrages on life, limb, and 
property, to which two classes of their own 
population are not infrequently subjected. 

The intimate connection existing be- 
tween the Declaration of Independence 
and the Constitution of the United States 
may perhaps justify a brief allusion to a 
limitation recently attached to one of the 
clauses of the former. It has been judicial- 
ly decided that the pursuit of happiness, 



GENERAL CONDITI(3N OF POLITICS. 2$ 

Specifically stated In the Declaration to be 
one of the inalienable riorhts wherewith all 
men are endowed by their Creator, does not 
extend to the happiness of getting drunk 
on Sunday or to that of killing policemen 
with dynamite. I have regarded it as not 
superfluous to make this statement, as a 
perusal of certain current petitions, open 
letters, and legislative memorials, — a class 
of literature which seems to possess great 
tenacity of life,— might, in the absence of 
all knowledge of the real facts in the 
case, create a directly contrary impression. 
I have for this reason deemed it prudent 
to record in this place that it has been 
judicially decided in more than one in- 
stance that the happiness of getting drunk 
on Sunday is not such an inalienable right 
but that it can be abridged by local legisla- 
tion, and that so high a tribunal as the Su- 
preme Court of the United States has held 



26 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

that fanatic principles justify homicide not 
one whit more than a quick temper or any 
other equally unromantic cause. 

As has been hinted above, it is especially 
difficult for the writer of contemporary 
history to observe that strict neutrality 
which is rigidly required of the reliable 
historian. The extent of that difficulty 
may be perhaps appreciated by reflecting 
that many historians of periods which are 
separated by several centuries from that 
of the author, have, nevertheless, been 
unable to view such distant events ex- 
cept through the colored medium of their 
personal sympathies and convictions. The 
names of Mr. Mitford and Mr. Grote will 
readily occur as examples of this very seri- 
ous fault of introducing into historical 
composition what is in effect a species of 
anachronism. Yet if the historian, detect- 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 27 

ing an analogy between the political parties 
of ancient Athens and those of modern 
England, can be influenced by his Whig or 
Tory sympathies in his estimate of states- 
men and philosophers of an age as remote 
as that of Pericles, it is not, surely, surpris- 
ing if the writer of contemporary history 
should at times depart from the narrow 
line of a strict neutrality in the discussion 
of events in regard to which he has at some 
prior time assumed, in all likelihood, a pos- 
itive and personal position. But even such 
a temptation is less subtle in its character 
than is still another which assails the his- 
torian of his own times. He is a part of 
the age which he depicts, and consequently 
feels a certain amount of personal pride in it. 
The temptation is therefore strong to soft- 
en, if not wholly conceal, such flagitious 
acts and circumstances as would seriously 
reflect upon the reputation of that age. 



28 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

I have ventured the foregoing prekide 
to the concluduig part of the present chap- 
ter, for the purpose of explaining the dis- 
agreeable position in which I am now 
placed. For it has become necessary to 
record at this point a state of affairs which 
will justify posterity in believing that our 
beloved Republic, with her much vaunted 
equality of all citizens in the sight of the 
law, is at the best but a pretentious sham. 
It has almost seemed to me as if my duties 
as an historian scarcely required me to re- 
cord so shameful a fact. I have been able 
to find but slight consolation for the sense 
of injury done to the reputation of my age 
and country by my scrupulous regard for 
the truth, in the reflection that an exhibi- 
tion of veracity in a direction so manifestly 
disagreeable must serve to convince pos- 
terity that this history, be its other faults as 
thick as dust, is at least reliable. 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 29 

I would therefore reluctantly state that 
an opinion, involving in a peculiar degree 
the reputation of our Republic and stigma- 
tized In 1864 as treasonable and disloyal, 
has in the year 1887 not only obtained a 
wide-spread circulation, but the refusal to 
accept it is viewed with suspicion as in- 
dicative of absolute disloyalty. I refer to 
the opinion that the war is a failure. In 
order that posterity may appreciate the 
weighty consequences involved in such an 
opinion, it is wise to be explicit. 

It had long since been admitted that the 
war is a failure from any stand-point of 
preserving the Union. The reconciliation 
which was effected between the North and 
the South at Appomattox, has for many 
years been viewed as purely formal, as a 
mere outward show of peace and good- 
will, under which sectional hate bubbles 
and burns as fiercely as ever. Although 



30 THE AGE OF CLEVELAKD. 

forced from this point of view to admit 
that the war is a failure, it was customary 
for every pure-hearted patriot to find a 
certain amount of comfort and orratulation 
in the thought that the war is a confessed 
success, in that it secures by the Fifteenth 
Amendment the riq^ht of suffrage to the 
negro. But it is now no longer possible 
to conceal the fact that the war is a failure, 
even from this stand-point. Humiliating 
as it is, the truth inexorably requires the 
confession to be made that the rio^ht of 
suffrage is not simply occasionally or local- 
ly denied the negro in the South, but sys- 
tematically and universally. I am aware 
that such an accusation involves a seri- 
ous attack upon the integrity, honor, and 
loyalty of a large portion of our population. 
It in fact implies the commission of such 
heinous crimes that I feel as if I had a right 
to ask posterity to demand no further proof 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 3 1 

of its truth than my uncorroborated state- 
ment. For no one, unless actuated by 
motives of unparalleled malevolence, Vv^ould 
venture to make such an accusation except 
upon evidence so convincing as to make 
any other conviction impossible. The ac- 
cusation has, in fact, obtained considerable 
circulation in our day by the weight at- 
tached to the personal word of the accus 
ers. I frankly admit that within the past 
year I have never seen produced in its 
support a particle of evidence of that for- 
mal and solemn character which is required 
to convict a citizen of the violation of a cor- 
poration ordinance. The wide circulation 
which this accusation has obtained, is due 
in a large measure to the unsworn state- 
ments of men whose social and political 
position is so high, whose professions of 
regard for the reputation of our Republic 
are so profuse, and vvhose protestations of 



32 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

interest in our national prosperity are so 
fervent, that incredulity would be almost 
a reflection upon their personal honesty 
and integrity. I have, however, decided 
to depart from the example set by these 
gentlemen who largely constitute my au- 
thority for bringing this accusation, and 
produce evidence of its truth.* Before 
doing so, I must, however, first caution 
posterity to avoid certain natural errors of 
judgment, which would make a proper ap- 
preciation of the value of this evidence 
impossible. Posterity must disregard the 
Bworn statements of many Southern citizens 
of excellent repute, must reject as worthless 
the official reports of several Congressional 
committees, and above all, attach no value 

* I must distinctly disclaim all credit of being the 
original discoverer of this evidence. I have heard it 
used on more than one occasion, although I am unable 
to state to whom the credit of its original discovery- 
should be given. 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 33 

as a precedent to the decision of the Elec- 
toral Commission, whereby it was decided 
that the properly certified returns of any 
State were such conclusive evidence of the 
regularity of an election as not only to ex- 
clude any legal action in the shape of a 
quo warranto, but as having such moral 
weight as to forever elevate the question 
from the region of debate. If the example 
of the present age in this direction is fol- 
lowed, the weight of the evidence which I 
am about to produce will be as apparent a 
century hence as it is now. 

This evidence is based upon two prin- 
ciples, that of population and that of he- 
redity. Before entering into any specific 
explanation of the former, I have deemed 
it wise to make another cautionary state- 
ment. The zeal of some few of my con- 
temporaries has not infrequently betrayed 
them into a certain intemperance of state- 



34 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

ment, wherefrom It might be inferred, that 
if there were a fair count in the South- 
ern States, every one of those States 
might be reHed upon as invariably giving 
a RepubHcan majority. That is scarcely 
an accurate view of the case. By the 
principle of population the character of 
the present majorities of the two States 
of South Carolina and Mississippi, would 
alone undergo a radical change. This is 
in a measure irrelevant, but I have ven- 
tured to make the statement, hoping that 
my frankness in conceding that even under 
a fair count many of the Southern States 
would still be entitled to a Democratic ma- 
jority, may serve to convince posterity 
that my conviction of the absolute nullifi- 
cation of the Fifteenth Amendment south of 
Mason and Dixon's line, rises to the dignity 
of a principle, and is not simply the result 
of a bitter and intemperate partisanship. 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 35 

The principle of population may be 
briefly stated to be a comparison of the 
black and white voting population of any 
State, with the certified returns of that 
State. The method of arriving at prac- 
tical results may be succinctly stated as 
follows. The negro, if unintimidated, will 
always vote the Republican ticket. This 
proposition rests largely upon the princi- 
ple of heredity to be shortly explained. 
Hence, by comparing the total Republican 
vote in any State with the total number of 
colored electors in that State, it is an easy 
matter to exactly determine to what extent 
the negro has been denied the right of suf- 
frage by either actual or constructive in- 
timidation. It is from such a comparison, 
made by myself personally, and based up- 
on the official census and certified returns, 
that I have been forced to accept the con- 
viction that the provisions of the Fifteenth 



2,6 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

Amendment are systematically violated in 
many of the Southern States. I have not 
deemed it necessary, however, to furnish 
any tables of statistics in support of this 
statement. If posterity desires such con- 
firmatory proof it will be easily found in 
the same orio^inal sources which I have con- 
suited. 

I shall now dismiss this branch of the 
subject and proceed to give a brief expla- 
nation of the principle of heredity. This 
principle is based upon the scientific theo- 
rem, that political tendencies are like any 
other physical or psychical habit trans- 
mitted from one generation to another. 
The importance of this principle of hered- 
ity cannot be depreciated by the easy sneer 
that it is purely theoretical, for it affords 
the only possible solution of an otherwise 
very perplexing political problem — z. c, how 
many generations of colored voters must 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 37 

arise in the Southern States before the in- 
herited fealty of that class to the Republi- 
can party shall entirely disappear. 

The number of consecutive generations to 
which any peculiarity of a common ancestor 
will be transmitted, depends almost exclu- 
sively upon the degree of intensity which 
marks the presence of that peculiarity in 
such an ancestor. The craving for tobac- 
co has been known to descend to the great- 
great-great-grandchildren of an inveterate 
smoker, while it is no unusual occurrence to 
find the immediate issue of the son of a mod- 
erate wine-drinker, uncompromising teeto- 
talers. It is therefore necessary in the pres- 
ent instance to simply ascertain how strong 
was the loyalty of the first race of colored 
citizens to the Republican party, in order to 
determine to how many consecutive gen- 
erations that loyalty will be transmitted. 
In order to fully appreciate this principle 



38 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

of heredity, however, one more circum- 
stance must be noted. It is a well-known 
physiological fact, that a habit which is 
contracted in childhood, is marked by 
much greater tenacity than if contracted 
in middle age or even in early manhood. 
The value of this fact is evident, when it is 
remembered that the negro contracted the 
habit of voting the Republican ticket dur- 
ing the very earliest stages of his political 
infancy. The strength of that habit will 
become equally apparent from the most 
superficial acquaintance with the thorough- 
ness of the training whereby he was led to 
contract it. 

In this view of the case it is highly im- 
portant for posterity to become familiar with 
that vigorous and systematic instruction 
furnished the negro at the very outset of his 
political life, that it was his solemn duty to 
invariably vote the Republican ticket, and 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 39 

that his failure to do so, on the occasion 
of even such an insignificant event as a 
local election, was not only a species of 
ingratitude without parallel and a tacit ad- 
mission of his readiness to return to a 
state of servitude, but an act of unequivo- 
cal encouragement to his former masters 
to revive the ancien regime with all its hor- 
rible accompaniments. It is surely rea- 
sonable to believe that a habit contracted 
through the powerful agency of such pains- 
taking and thorough discipline, should be 
transmitted to one succeeding generation 
at least ; it is not difficult to conceive of its 
transmission to several consecutive gener- 
ations, so that until miscegenation, climate, 
or other physical causes shall have inter- 
rupted or neutralized the operation of this 
law of heredity by completely changing his 
status, the negro, unless intimidated by act- 
ual violence or unlawful threats, will never 



40 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

of his own free, unaided choice vote the 
Democratic ticket. 

Although I have studiously avoided 
burdening posterity with cumbersome and 
uninteresting tables of statistics or the cita- 
tion of special cases, I cannot refrain from 
calling attention to an occurrence of recent 
date which I regard as of considerable 
value in refuting the many stringent and 
hostile criticisms continually passed upon 
the intelligence of the negro as an elector. 
Many Northern voters of more than aver- 
age intelligence seem to be unable to com- 
prehend the exact position of the Republic- 
an party on the question of the saloon in 
politics. That excellent via media of pro- 
hibition without prohibition, is not infre- 
quently lost sight of. The blunder of 
many of my contemporaries in imagining 
that prohibition pure and simple, without 
any negative limitation, is a distinctively Re- 



GENERAL CONDITION OF POLITICS. 4I 

publican principle, led to consequences of a 
serious character in the fall elections of the 
past year. Yet the negro of the South ex- 
hibited far superior intelligence in that di- 
rection. For when that issue was raised 
in Atlanta at a recent election, he voted 
steadily against prohibition, presumably on 
the ground that it was obnoxious to his Re- 
publican principles, as he of all others was 
the most benefited by the absence of sa- 
loons in that city. 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 

I AM sufficient of an egotist to believe 
that I have had the good fortune to be 
born in what is destined to be regarded as 
the Saturnian age of Science. Moreover, 
the modern spirit of scientific investiga- 
tion is marked by a cathoHcity of effort no 
less surprising than brilliancy of achieve- 
ment. Science has, in fact, taken the entire 
range of human comfort and convenience 
for her especial field. A famous anatomist 
had no sooner proclaimed the triumphant 
discovery of a method for locating ab- 
scesses on the brain, than a distinguished 
specialist announced the invention of a 
system of clothing manufactured upon 
strict scientific and sanitary principles, and 
calculated to materially aid in the physical 

(45) 



46 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

regeneration of mankind. Subjects as va- 
rying in quality and degree as the virtues 
of cocaine as an anaesthetic, whereby 
operations should be rendered painless, 
and shoes sewed on anatomical lasts, 
whereby locomotion should be made easy, 
each and all receive the same earnest, re- 
spectful attention of contemporary science. 
The simple enumeration of the mere 
titles of the various inventions of this 
prolific age would require entirely too 
much space, while anything like an accu- 
rate or intelligible description of them all 
is wholly out of the question. Nor have I 
deemed it necessary to furnish even such 
a catalogue of titles. There is a full and 
accurate index of patents in the office of 
the Commissioner at Washington, and the 
systematic date kept of the record of the 
filing of the caveats, makes it extremely 
unlikely that the present age will be de- 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 47 

frauded of the credit for any invention 
which has been properly patented. 

But there is reasonable ground for ap- 
prehension lest in the case of those dis- 
coveries which are unpatentable in them- 
selves, and of those for which the inventor, 
either through negligence or poverty, failed 
to secure a patent, a certain amount of 
confusion may arise, and the reputation of 
the present age suffer a positive injury by 
posterity arrogating to itself the credit for 
discoveries which undoubtedly belong to 
contemporary science. Nor shall I at- 
tempt to describe all such discoveries, 
many of which, I frankly admit, may never 
have come under my notice, but shall con- 
fine myself to a description of those alone 
which are not ephemeral in their nature, 
but destined to retain their novelty a cen- 
tury or so. 

The dual discovery that there is no God 



48 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

and no personal immortality, may be said 
to be the chief of the many brilliant 
achiev^ements of science, although, per- 
haps, the honor of the first must be shared 
with an earlier age. For, if certain ancient 
chronicles are to be believed, the credit 
for this discovery must be given to an 
anonymous individual who lived some three 
or four thousand years ago, and although 
he was generally regarded by his contem- 
poraries as a fool for entertaining such an 
opinion, he must, in the light of the most 
recent researches in biology, be considered 
as having been several centuries in ad- 
vance of his aofe. I have not deemed it 
necessary to enter into any discussion of 
the credibility of these ancient chronicles 
with a view to determining in what period 
of history this discovery was originally 
made. I shall content myself with simply 
calling the attention of posterity to one 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 49 

incontestable fact. Even if a past age 
must be credited with actually originating 
this discovery, that cannot detract in the 
least from the glory which belongs to my 
own. For contemporary science has been 
the first to make this discovery of any 
practical utility by popularizing it, so to 
speak, thereby bringing within the reach 
of all what had heretofore been monopo- 
lized by a few progressive minds. 

I have sometimes wondered whether 
posterity will be so prodigiously grateful 
to us, after all, for these two discoveries, as 
we are wont to imagine. Belief in Prov- 
idence used to be a mighty comfort, and 
the obsolete view of regarding the life of 
the present as simply the beginning of an 
eternal sentient existence seemed to fur- 
nish about the only satisfactory solution of 
very many vexatious problems. Experi- 
ence, moreover, appears to teach that 



50 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

mankind are not so completely controlled 
by a disinterested desire for knowledge as 
to feel grateful for the explosion of a pleas- 
ant fiction by the discovery of a disagree- 
able truth. I have ventured these remarks 
for the purpose of explaining any traces of 
resentment which may occasionally exhibit 
themselves in this chapter. I frankly ad- 
mit that I once believed myself to be an 
immortal soul, and I must confess that this 
discovery of the contrary aroused in me 
such violent feelinofs of mino;-led raofe and 
disappointment as to make ignorance seem 
infinitely preferable to wisdom. I shall, 
however, make an honest effort to lay 
aside my personal feelings and discuss 
this whole subject with the strictest impar- 
tiality of which I am capable. 

Another discovery of great importance, 
is that of an orio;inal and exact definition 
of life. By reason of the long-standing 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 51 

misapprehension that human and animal 
life were wholly different in their origin 
and scope, the former had been made the 
subject of many flattering beliefs, and 
come to be regarded as something akin to 
divinity. But science, by a persistent and 
exhaustive examination of Crustacea, oys- 
ters, and apes, has finally succeeded in 
distinguishing between the true and the 
false by accurately defining life as a con- 
nexus of organic activities. Although this 
definition is a trifle mortifying, in that it 
obliterates all distinction between man 
and the mollusk, it has, nevertheless, had 
a clarifying influence, serving to dispel 
many illusions of long standing, and work- 
ing a complete revolution in all prior 
notions of ethical laws. Drunkenness, 
murder, and theft are now no longer 
viewed with that childish and superstitious 
horror with which such phenomena had 



52 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

inspired former generations, but simply as 
imperfect manifestations of these organic 
activities, which, under a totally different 
environment, would have been developed 
into temperance, philanthropy, and hon- 
esty ; just as flesh, brilliant in coloring 
and exquisite in texture, differs not one 
whit in organic structure from that which, 
through imperfect development of the tis- 
sues, degenerates into cancer. 

It seems to me scarcely possible to over- 
rate the importance of this discovery, that 
mind and spirit are simply finer forms of 
matter. I am, in fact, quite convinced that 
it is destined to exercise a wide influence 
over the conduct of men in the future. It 
is, therefore, only natural that I should 
desire to emphasize that the credit for 
making it may be justly claimed by the 
present age. It is for this reason that I 
desire to call the attention of posterity to 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 53 

a recent work by Herr Tudelsdorf, entitled 
" Das Verhaltnisz Zwischen Moral und 
Magen," or, in the translation, *' The Con- 
nection between Morals and Stomach." 
This valuable contribution to the literature 
of exact science is at present known to 
only a select few, although I am much sur- 
prised at its limited circulation, for it pos- 
sesses all the essentials of an extensive 
popularity, since the author is a foreigner 
by birth, and is both realistic in his de- 
scriptions and heterodox in his sentiments. 
The purpose of the book is to prove that 
morals are a mere matter of diet. The 
author, a distinguished biologist, and at 
one time a professor in a German univer- 
sity, but for many years a resident of the 
United States, spent considerable time in 
perfecting his theory, and has recently 
made public the results of a long series of 
experiments, which are alike interesting 



54 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

and convincing. The subject of these ex- 
periments were, with but few exceptions, 
notorious housebreakers, murderers, anar- 
chists, and similar outcasts of society. It 
follows, therefore, that the book should 
contain the latest information concerning 
the habits, thoughts, modes of life, and 
peculiar aj'got of the criminal classes ; and 
as the distinguished author is not troubled 
with any modish scruples of propriety, the 
style is the very perfection of art in its 
naturalism. As has been hinted above, I 
cannot understand why the volume has not 
attained a wide circulation, but I wish to 
assure posterity that not only are its con- 
tents well known to all advanced thinkers 
of the present age, but that the conclusions 
reached by the distinguished author are 
fully and unreservedly accepted by such. 
There is space here for only the most 
meagre summary of the contents of this 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 55 

volume, which I am confident Is destined 
to supersede the " Pilgrim's Progress " and 
*' Paradise Lost," on the book-shelves of 
the next generation. This summary Is 
not, of course, furnished for the Instruc- 
tion of posterity, but Is Inserted In this 
place simply as proof that contemporary 
society Is familiar with Herr Ttidelsdorfs 
great discovery, and that the credit for It 
properly belongs to the present age. 

A falling apple first suggested the law of 
gravitation to the Inquiring mind of New- 
ton ; and the discovery of many of the 
principles of science has been due to cir- 
cumstances equally trivial. The case of 
Herr Tiidelsdorf is no exception to that 
rule. A law-abiding citizen, and conserva- 
tive in his politics, he was on one occasion, 
when walking through the Thiergarten at 
Berlin, seized with a sudden and unac- 
countable mania for assassinating the Kai- 



56 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

ser. The suggestion horrified him in the 
extreme, but, try as he would, he was un- 
able to expel it from his mind, and even 
went so far as to walk in the direction of 
the Schloss. By a prodigious mental 
effort he finally succeeded in so far regain- 
ing control of himself as to retrace his 
steps, and at length reached home in a 
state of nervous excitement bordering on 
delirium, and trembling with the appre- 
hension that his brain was softeninof. As 
he entered the house he was suddenly 
seized with severe pains in the stomach, 
accompanied with nausea, and he mixed 
himself a glass of pepsin and soda, which 
brouo^ht him immediate relief With the 
cessation of his physical pains the regicid- 
al mania, which had given him such alarm, 
also vanished. He then made an effort to 
recollect if he had eaten anything unusual 
during the day, and suddenly remembered 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 57 

that he had partaken heartily at dinner of 
some bologna sausage highly seasoned 
with garlic, — a dish which he subsequently 
learned, by the merest accident, was a 
great favorite with the German socialists. 
The synchronism between the disordered 
condition of his stomach and anarchical 
frenzy led him to suspect that the connec- 
tion between the two was causal and not 
accidental. He accordingly determined to 
test the matter still further, and partook 
on the following day of bologna, dressed 
in an exactly similar fashion. The re- 
sult was in a measure startling. There 
was a recurrence of the same disaofreeable 
physical symptoms, and violent regicidal 
mania, and relief from each was only ob- 
tained by recourse to pepsin and soda. A 
still further incident served to convince 
Herr Tiidelsdorf that he was on the veree 
of one of the greatest discoveries of the agew 



58 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 



He noticed that his youngest daughter, 
Gretchen, a mere child, in the nursery, of 
an unusually amiable disposition, and care- 
ful in an extraordinary degree of her play- 
things, was, when suffering from the colic, 
not only subject to violent outbursts of 
temper, but gready given to destroying 
everything which came within her reach. 
Subsequent investigation in this direction, 
as well as his own personal experience, 
ultimately served to convince the Profes- 
sor that all kinds of anarchical sentiments 
were due entirely to the colic in some form 
or other. An exhaustive monograph 
which he published, containing an account 
of his investigations up to this point, at- 
tracted considerable attention, and he 
finally secured permission from the Di- 
rector of Police to make an actual appli- 
cation of his theory upon the prisoners 
confined on the charge of socialism in the 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 59 

prison at Plotzen See, The result was 
satisfactory in the highest degree. The 
method pursued was curative, and not diag- 
nostic ; for the Professor had determined 
to reduce his theory to practice by a prac- 
tical demonstration, that all forms of an- 
archical frenzy could be permanently cured 
by the same remedies employed for the 
relief of colic. The four subjects whom 
he had selected for purposes of experiment 
were the reddest and most radical commu- 
nists in Europe, yet in less than a year 
they were converted into law-abiding citi- 
zens of a highly conservative type by 
small doses of soothing-syrup judiciously 
and methodically administered under the 
personal direction of Herr Tlidelsdorf. 

The Professor then enlarged the scope 
of his investigations so as to include the 
entire field of ethics. Shortly after his re- 
moval to the United States, and at about 



6o THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

the same time that a distinoruished contem- 
porary had announced that all nervous dis- 
eases were due to the imperfect focusing of 
the eyes, he completed and published his 
magnum opus, which proves, by a multi- 
tude of experiments, that all immoralities 
are entirely due to a disturbance of the 
normal proportion of acid and alkali in the 
stomach. 

I must now hurriedly pass over the vari- 
ous other discoveries made by science in 
the present age. I would, however, beg 
posterity not to construe the limited space 
assigned to their description as any reflec- 
tion upon their relative importance, but to 
regard it as due entirely to the brevity 
necessarily imposed upon me by the size 
of the present volume. 

By the fact that it was capable of a cer- 
tain amount of verification from the past, the 
discovery of Natural Selection has attracted 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 6l 

considerable attention. For this discovery- 
placed in an entirely original light a custom 
which had prevailed to a considerable ex- 
tent in former years. I refer to mariages 
de convenance. As man is an animal, his 
sole object in mating must be that the de- 
ficiencies of one of the parties should be 
supplemented by the acquirements of the 
other. In view of this fact, it is easy to 
understand how 77iariages de convenarice 
are in exact accord with the highest 
scientific principles. For thereby the 
poverty of one of the contracting parties 
is relieved by the wealth of the other; 
the bourgeois blood of the husband neu- 
tralized by the aristocratic descent of the 
wife. It is, however, a little curious that 
the custom should have fallen into disre- 
pute at about the same time that the only 
scientific explanation of its existence was 
discovered. There can be no question, 



THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 



however, but that this present abeyance is 
only temporary, and that mariages de con- 
vena7ice will be resumed in the future, 
when they will attain a still greater pre- 
cision, inasmuch as they will then be wise- 
ly regulated by scientific principles and not 
by mere rude instinct as in the past. 

But the greatest and most original dis- 
covery of all, is that of Evolution. This 
must not, however, be confounded with 
Natural Selection. Both were, it is true, 
invented by the same man, but, although 
apparently identical, they are in reality 
related to each other as is cause to effect. 
The limited space which I would be per- 
force compelled to assign to any descrip- 
tion of this great discovery, might be 
misleading. The conspicuous absence of 
any details might, in fact, justify the infer- 
ence that my estimate of the magnitude of 
this great discovery is greatly exaggerated. 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 63 

I will therefore content myself with mak- 
ing- a single cautionary suggestion and 
refer posterity for all further information 
on this subject to those large octavo vol- 
umes wherein the subject is exhaustively 
discussed, and also to the recently pub- 
lished life of the inventor. For I am 
confident that the voluminous literature of 
the subject will outlast my own genera- 
tion for a considerable time and be easily 
accessible for inspection a century or so 
hence. 

I would therefore caution posterity to 
avoid the error, which is not uncommon in 
our day, of imagining that the descent of 
man is the only phenomenon capable of ex- 
planation by evolution. It is infinitely more 
ambitious In its aim and scope, seeking to 
furnish a sufficient reason for every phe- 
nomenon, small or great, in the universe. 
All progress In Belles Lettres and Fhiloso- 



64 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

phy is clearly shown to be but the result 
of evolution. Moreover, whenever the 
productions or talents of an individual au- 
thor interfere with the horoscope cast by 
the evolutionists for some particular age, 
science does not dogmatically seek to prove 
his existence a myth or endeavor to depre- 
ciate his abilities into that dead level of 
mediocrity required by the laws of evolu- 
tion, but charitably accounts for his ap- 
pearance by the clever supposition that he 
was a hybrid. States, with their complex 
constitutions and societies, with their deli- 
cate and elaborate machinery for the pro- 
tection of life and property, have been 
proven to be the evolutionary result of 
bardic meetings in the past and the blood- 
money of the original German tribes ; while 
in the philosophy of cooking, the origin of 
the miracles of pastry art constructed by 
our modern cJiefsy has been definitely 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 65 

retraced through successive and gradual 
stages of development to the mud-pies of 
the primitive Aryan race. 

Having ventured to exhibit a certain 
amount of personal irritation at the com- 
mencement of this chapter, I should be 
guilty of an unpardonable injustice, did I 
omit to specify the unquestioned benefits 
which accrued from many of the discover- 
ies made by science. .Although all belief 
in a conscious immortality had long since 
been destroyed, science nevertheless holds 
out the hope that according to the Con- 
servation and Correlation of Energies no 
life, however insignificant, is wholly lived 
in vain. Man ani the mollusk, it is gra- 
ciously hinted, contribute alike indifferently 
toward keeping the world in a condition 
of active motion, which would otherwise 
fall into a very perilous state of sloth. I 



66 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

am sadly conscious of my inability to bring 
to the discussion of this biological concep- 
tion of the universe anything like that de- 
gree of enthusiasm to which the subject is 
entitled. I can only plead for my lack of 
ardor that the discovery is of comparative- 
ly recent origin, and that the memory of my 
discarded belief in a future state plagues 
me with an uncomfortable sense of the in- 
adequacy of a posthumous and impersonal 
contribution to the kinetic energy of mat- 
ter, as a substitute for personal immortality. 
But te77tpo7^a mutaiitur^ et nos imcta7nur. 
Habit is a facile magician, and the next 
generation will no doubt entertain feelings 
of a very different character on this sub- 
ject. For when the leaven of this new 
gospel has had time to work, men will 
view death with exceeding peace and 
calmness, cheered by the thought that the 
bones, which St. Paul and eighteen sub- 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 6/ 

sequent centuries fondly hoped would be 
clothed upon with immortality, will not 
vainly perish, but by being converted into 
excellent fertilizers, materially improve the 
digestion of coming races, and that the 
cunning chemic cells, once supposed to be 
the habitation of an immortal soul, will 
furnish a superior kind of phosphate for 
the relief of overtaxed brain-workers in 
the future. 

It is, however, pleasant to be able to 
record that although science destroyed 
the world's hope of immortality, she has 
greatly facilitated the means for the at- 
tainment of a painless longevity. Never 
in the history of the world as at the pres- 
ent time have such numberless laboratories 
been in active operation for the manufac- 
ture of pain-killers, extracts, syrups, plas- 
ters, and other infallible cures for all or- 
ganic diseases. The marvellous rapidity 



68 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

with which such articles are manufactured 
is only excelled by the low price at which 
they are exposed for sale, and thereby 
brought within the reach of both rich and 
poor. In fact, in even the present age 
the cost of prolonging life easily and 
painlessly to a considerable term be- 
yond the traditional threescore years and 
ten, is much less than that of Chris- 
tian burial formerly, and it is only reason- 
able to expect that greater opportunities 
still, will be offered in this direction in the 
future. 

Moreover, the opinion that increased 
facilities for the attainment of longevity 
might prove a comfortable substitute for 
immortality, seems to have found in even 
our day a certain amount of confirmation 
in quarters least expected. For I have 
noticed that many religious newspapers 
have begun to devote their columns, here- 



THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 69 

tofore exclusively reserved for the discus- 
sion of themes of a spiritual nature, to ad- 
vertisements of sarsaparillas for the blood, 
pads for the liver, and protectors for the 
chest. 



THE MORAL, INDUSTRIAL, AND 
SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE 
AGE. 



THE MORAL, INDUSTRIAL, AND 
SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE 
AGE. 

A DISAGREEABLE and humiliating task 
awaits me at the very threshold of the 
present chapter. Any picture of the con- 
dition of contemporary morality, must. If 
faithfully limned, be absolutely repulsive to 
such as have the slightest respect for even 
conventional decorum. The foulest excess- 
es are an every-day occurrence. Murder, 
bigamy, theft, and similar crimes are on 
the constant Increase. The Instincts of our 
population are of the lowest order. Our 
moral degeneracy Is, In fact, so complete 
that the most sanguine has lost all hope 
that temperance, honesty, and virtue should 
ever become our national traits once more. 

(73) 



74 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

I feel confident that I have exhibited 
elsewhere in this volume sufficient indica- 
tions of patriotism and personal pride in 
my age, to convince posterity that nothing 
except an irresistible regard for the truth 
would induce me to bring such charges of 
turpitude against my contemporaries. It 
is only by evidence so conclusive as to ad- 
mit of no denial that I have been forced to 
accept such shameful conclusions. 

That evidence has been furnished me by 
a great metropolitan journal, the sworn 
circulation of which is simply stupendous. 
I have been forced to construe its popu- 
larity as convincing proof of its reliability. 
Any other course would have convicted 
my countrymen of being either fools or 
knaves, — that is, as either so credulous as 
to be unable to distinguish between true 
and false news, or as so lacking in all 
reverence for the truth as to lend their 



MORAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 75 

support to the publication of protracted 
falsehoods and misrepresentations. Apart 
from my unwillingness to place such an 
unflattering construction upon the char- 
acter of my contemporaries, the continued 
success of that journal soon convinced me 
that either of these two propositions was 
untenable. A fraud is always short-lived, 
and time alone is required to make a liar 
tiresome even to those who are themselves 
wholly indifferent to the truth. The con- 
stantly increasing circulation of that journal 
was, therefore, accepted by me as an addi- 
tional proof of its reliability. 

I must admit that it has required no in- 
considerable effort to overcome my natural 
reluctance to expose the unwholesome 
condition of contemporary morality. My 
feelings on this subject have in fact been 
so stronof that I have resorted to various 
expedients whereby I might be enabled to 



'j6 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

truthfully modify my views. I, for in- 
stance, made a systematic search to dis- 
cover some ground for believing that the 
policy of this journal was purely sensa- 
tional, and that it therefore only sought to 
record those events w^hich became tragic, 
because of their criminality, or startling, 
by reason of their sensuality. But I 
speedily became convinced that I had no 
reasonable ground for such an hypothesis. 
I was forced to conclude, from the profuse 
and passionate claims to impartiality put 
forth by this journal — to the sincerity of 
which so many of my contemporaries had 
attested by their subscriptions — that it was 
wholly without likes and dislikes, that vir- 
tue and vice were viewed by it from the 
same impartial stand-point of news, and 
that, if the record of good and fair actions 
found only an occasional place in its col- 
umns, this was entirely due to their rarity 



MORAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. "JJ 

in real life, and not to any editorial aver- 
sion to their publication. 

It is no occasional or spasmodic exam- 
ination of the columns of this journal which 
has led me to form such a damning opinion 
concerning the present state of morals. 
That opinion has been formed only af- 
ter a careful and systematic daily perusal 
for a period of more than two years. 
It is too much to say that I have been un- 
able to discover a single action which dig- 
nifies human conduct recorded during that 
time in the columns of that journal. But 
those which I did find were of such rare 
occurrence, and the space allotted to them 
was so brief, that they would have wholly 
escaped my attention had I not been on 
the constant alert to discover some in- 
stance of virtue and decorum, however in- 
significant, to relieve the blackness of the 
long catalogue of crime. 



78 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

I would that I could relieve myself of 
all personal responsibility in this matter, 
by disclosing the name of my authority, 
which, for prudential reasons, I have 
deemed it best to withhold altogether. To 
be frank, I am afraid lest posterity, be- 
coming familiar with the various artifices 
employed as advertising mediums in the 
present age, would view this volume with 
a certain amount of distrust, did I specify 
that journal by name. It might, in fact, 
suggest the suspicion that this history, 
which I have conscientiously endeavored 
to raise to the dignified level of an impar- 
tial record of events, is no history at all, 
but simply a novel species of editorial en- 
terprise on the part of that journal, invented 
for the purpose of increasing its circulation 
by publicly advertising the large space re- 
served in its columns for the discussion of 
scandals and crimes. It is in view of some 



MORAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 79 

such insinuation being made that I have 
deemed it pertinent to distinctly affirm, in 
this place, that neither this chapter nor 
this book is written in the interest of any 
daily or weekly journal. I will make that 
affirmation stronger by the additional state- 
ment that I have no affiliations — social, 
political, or literary — with any member of 
the newspaper press. 

I have also considered it wise to explain 
at this point why it is that, in discussing 
the subject under present consideration, I 
have contented myself with general alle- 
gations, which, though, I trust, are suffi- 
ciently unequivocal to be explicit, are con- 
spicuous for an absence of all details. 
Another reason than a feeling of repug- 
nance toward lingering over a subject so 
manifestly painful, has influenced me in 
this respect. Although it was possible to 
comment on many vices and crimes with 



80 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

perfect frankness and unlimited freedom, I 
would still have had to confine myself to 
the widest generalities in the discussion of 
one class of immoralities. It is only simple 
justice to state that this would not have 
been due to any lack of particulars in the 
journal constituting my authority. That 
class of immoralities are described therein 
with painstaking attention and patient re- 
gard for the most insignificant items. Cau- 
tion alone has prompted me to take this 
course, for I was quite unable to determine, 
with any degree of certainty, to what ex- 
tent the Society for the Suppression of 
Vice would permit me to indulge in details. 
Nor need posterity be at all surprised that 
what can be printed with impunity in a 
journal claiming to have half a million of 
readers, cannot be safely published in a 
book which can never hope to attain such 
an extensive circulation. The paradox will 



MORAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 8 1 

become at once intelligible if a single im- 
portant distinction is only noted. It is 
agreed in the present age that the most 
extravagant license of theme and treatment 
is not only excusable, but commendable, 
when used for the dissemination of news ; 
whereas the same license, if employed in a 
formal contribution to literature, is promptly 
rebuked as injurious to the public morals. 
For this reason, I deemed it prudent to 
avoid any possible risk of collision with 
that Society which might result in causing 
my book to be suppressed within ten days 
after publication. That Society, therefore, 
and not I, must be held responsible for the 
vague treatment which this whole subject 
has received at my hands, as it seemed 
ridiculous to exhaustively discuss some 
topics, when, by the very nature of things, 
I would be compelled to dismiss others of 
equal importance with the most general 



82 THE AGE OF CLEVELANR 



allegations. Having made this explana- 
tion, I shall now turn from this very disa- 
greeable theme to the discussion of an- 
other infinitely more pleasing to me. 

It would be unnatural for any one having 
the prosperity of our country at heart, to 
curb in the least his fervent expressions of 
thankfulness for our recent safe deliverance 
from a most serious industrial crisis. I 
am not, of course, unaware that such an 
intrusion of personal feelings is, from a 
strict point of view, slightly unprofessional, 
and apt to be regarded as inconsistent with 
that judicial attitude which the historian is 
expected to uniformly observe. I am confi- 
dent, however, that posterity will view with 
a kindly eye any effusion of enthusiastic 
pride, which it were well-nigh unpatriotic to 
suppress, in describing our narrow escape 
from a predicament of such a critical nature 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 83 

as to threaten for a time the stability of 
our government. As a familiarity with the 
gravity of the situation is necessary in order 
to appreciate the sufficiency of my grounds 
for congratulation, it is pardonable to mi- 
nutely describe the condition of affairs 
which culminated in such a serious crisis. 

It had been surmised for a long time by 
the more astute observers of current events 
that there was on foot a secret but wxll- 
developed plot to betray the United States 
into the hands of Great Britain. '* Trifles, 
light as air," if viewed as detached circum- 
stances, but of w^eighty moment if regarded 
as parts of a coherent whole, had not failed 
to attract considerable attention in certain 
quarters. The unpatriotic indifference ex- 
hibited in the Fisheries Dispute, the negli- 
gence in providing proper and adequate 
coast defences, the erection of a monument 
to Major Andre on American soil, and the 



84 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

unconcealed admiration of Mr. Lowell for 
British society — these, and many other in- 
cidents which might be easily cited, were 
highly suspicious as evidences of some oc- 
cult scheme of disgraceful treachery ; just 
as the indications of g^neiss at occasional 
intervals on the surface is sufficient to con- 
vince the geologist that an excavation of 
the soil will reveal a continuous stratum of 
that primary rock. 

Although subsequent events fully justi- 
fied such prognostications, only a few were 
sufficiently far-sighted to discern from the 
first the omens of coming danger. The 
people at large, lulled into a false security 
by the deceitful indications of coming pros- 
perity, pursued their wonted avocations, 
oblivious of the sword of Damocles sus- 
pended above their heads. But on De- 
cember 6, 1887, the slight thread by which 
that sword was suspended was rudely sev- 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 85 

ered, and it fell with an ominous clatter, 
bringing consternation and panic to the 
American people. On that day, to drop 
all metaphor, our de facto President made 
public the contents of his annual Message 
to Congress. I would remark here that I 
have no desire to impugn the motives of 
our de facto President, for I feel as if he 
were entitled to a certain amount of respect 
by virtue of his position. For this reason 
I shall not dwell, as have many of my con- 
temporaries, upon the latent suggestions, 
hidden meaning, and general tenor of that 
Message, from which the inference would 
be clearly deducible that the author must 
have been influenced to write it by the 
promise of a large subsidy from the Eng- 
lish government. I shall therefore content 
myself with the statement of undisputed 
facts, leaving the analysis of motives to 
some other historian. 



S6 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

The unequiv^ocal encouragement given 
by that Message to British industries was 
patent on its face. Not less patent was 
the evidence which it furnished of a foul 
conspiracy for the final destruction of the 
Union. Moreover, the audacious details 
of that conspiracy, as revealed in the Mes- 
sage itself, were a surprise even to those 
who had had their suspicions already 
aroused. It was now apparent to the most 
sceptical that the ultimate purpose of the 
Anglo-American Cabal was to completely 
beggar the country by free trade, when by 
reason of its exhausted condition it would 
fall an easy prey to the gun-boats of the 
British navy. 

The blackness of that day will scarcely 
admit of exaggeration, recalling, as it did, 
the deep despondency which prevailed at 
the North at the time of the attack on 
Fort Sumter. It is not indeed too much 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 8/ 

to say that the gloom was even more in- 
tense. The prospect of our glorious 
Union, rent with civil feuds, and drenched 
with fraternal blood, was hard enough to 
face. It was an infinitely more bitter 
thought that our Republic, born from the 
throes of revolution and fostered into a 
great commercial commonwealth by a sys- 
tem of wise and generous protection, was 
destined to degenerate into a mere terri- 
torial adjunct of Great Britain. What 
disgrace could be keener than that thirty- 
eight States should be treacherously de- 
prived of that independence which had 
been won a century before by only thirteen, 
at the cost of unparalleled heroism and 
self-sacrifice ? 

Such gloomy thoughts were to be read 
on every countenance. The mechanic cast 
his tools on his bench, the weaver left his 
loom, the shoemaker dropped his last. 



88 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

each and all disheartened by the thought 
that the time was not now far distant when 
the laboring man in America would be 
compelled to work for pauper wages and 
die in a pauper workhouse. The actual 
injury done to great industrial enterprises 
was of a serious nature. I shall, however, 
leave it to the statistician to formally record 
how many factories shut off steam, and 
how many furnaces banked their fires in 
consequence of this Message. An atmos- 
phere of absolute panic prevailed. Men 
sorely felt the need of help, but where was 
help to come from when the de facto Presi 
dent of the United States had shown him 
self to be an open sympathizer with the 
Anglo-American Cabal ? 

But help did come. " The land laughs 
with applause," to quote the felicitous 
phrase coined by one of my contempo- 
raries in describing the present crisis. 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 89 

The revulsion from tears to lauorhter, 
from gloom to glee, was quick, but none 
the less genuine and sincere. More- 
over, help came from the only source 
whence it could be expected to come, al- 
though it involved an economic paradox. 
A dual executive is usually considered a 
menace to constitutional government. In 
the present instance it proved our salva- 
tion. For shortly after the formal trans- 
mission to Congress of the annual Message 
of our de facto President, the annual mes- 
sage of our de jt^re President was trans- 
mitted to the American people. The lat- 
ter outlined a policy directly contrary to 
that which had been indicated in the former. 
Its effect was electrical. Men of varying 
and diverse conditions, — the poorest labor- 
er, the more prosperous shopkeeper, the 
wealthy manufacturer, — lost all fear. Con- 
fidence succeeded panic, for the prophecy 



90 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

made at the time of the nomination of our 
de jure President had been Hterally ful- 
filled. Nothinor more was needed than 
the presence at the helm of such a "calm, 
deliberate, commanding, sagacious man," 
to eive the fullest assurance that the old 
Ship of State which seemed destined but 
a few days before "to go down beneath 
the waves forever, carrying her precious 
freight with her," would now surely " come 
into her harbor, into still water, into safety." 
I have purposely refrained from tran- 
scribing in full this message of our de jiire 
President. In the first place, I am not quite 
sure that it has received the author's latest 
revisions ; and I am, moreover, confident 
that it is destined to be reverently cherished 
by succeeding generations, as the Mag- 
na Charta which saved the liberties of the 
people in 1887, and will therefore be easily 
accessible for the inspection of posterity. 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 9I 

There is one feature of it, however, to 
which I desire to call particular attention. 
Posterity must not regard this message as 
the unofficial utterances of a simple Amer- 
ican citizen. Such a view of the case 
would furnish sufficient grounds for believ- 
ing that I had either exaggerated the 
gravity of the situation or magnified the 
importance of the message itself For it 
would naturally seem incredible that the 
personal opinions of a single individual 
could have so powerfully swayed the 
destinies of fifty millions of people. It 
is, therefore, with no intention of disparag- 
ing the broad statesmanship apparent in 
every page of that message that I empha- 
size the fact that it was the official position 
of the author as the de jicre President of 
the United States, which lent it such a po- 
tent influence. Moreover, the subsequent 
revelation that the policy of our de jure 



92 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 



President met with the approval of one 
member of his cabinet at least, contributed 
in no small degree toward fully restoring 
public confidence. For, on January 4, 
1888, our de jure Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, in his annual report to the Senate of 
the United States, expressed his full con- 
currence in the recommendations previous- 
ly suggested by his official superior. 

. No apologies are, I am sure, required 
for the foregoing circumstantial account of 
this critical period in our history. It, 
moreover, serves as an excellent introduc- 
tion to the discussion of our present in- 
dustrial condition, to which I shall forth- 
with devote myself. 

No one is better aware than am I of the 
popular prejudice which exists against 
tables of statistics. I have for this reason 
decided to depart altogether from that 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 93 

formal statistical method uniformly ob- 
served by all writers on the industrial con- 
dition of a country. Such a resolution 
necessarily involves the exclusion of all 
comments upon the balance of trade, the 
condition of agriculture, the growth of 
manufacturing and mining interests, and 
other kindred subjects which cannot be in- 
telligently discussed without the aid of 
tables and diagrams. I shall, for this 
reason, confine myself strictly to the con- 
sideration of the condition of labor in the 
present age, which, though but a single 
phase of this great subject, is entirely 
worthy of the exclusive attention which I 
shall bestow on it. 

Every one, unless lacking in all humane 
instincts, must view with unfeigned indig- 
nation the disgraceful anachronism pre- 
sented by the present position of the 



94 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

American laborer. While England, through 
the persistent efforts of the late Lord 
Shaftesbury, was passing law after law for 
the benefit of those employed in factories 
and mines, and even barbaric Russia was 
relieving the hardships of her peasantry by 
giving them a communal interest in the 
soil, the United States can point to only 
one triumphant act of legislation in the 
direct interest of labor, and that is the 
half-holiday law. 

Posterity must not construe this con- 
spicuous absence of all labor legislation as 
evidence that there is need of none. It is 
not too much to say, that at no time in the 
past was the condition of the laboring 
man accompanied with more peculiar hard- 
ships than it is in the present. The ma- 
jority of able-bodied workmen are wholly 
unable to obtain work, and such few as are 
so fortunate as to find employment receive 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 95 

only Starvation wages. The poverty and 
distress which marks the lot of the laborer 
is pitiable. He never has a fire in winter, 
and his clothing is so scant and thin as to 
scarcely meet the requirements of decency, 
and is painfully insufficient as a protection 
against the most mildly inclement weather. 
These statements are no hasty or irre- 
sponsible utterances of my own. They 
are made upon the authority of a gentle- 
man who has devoted much time to the 
investigation of the subject, and is the 
proclaimed champion of labor. I am, 
moreover, obliged to confess that these 
statements, though appalling in themselves, 
seem cold and meagre when taken out 
from the rhetorical setting of pathos, pas- 
sion, and invective in which they are en- 
shrined in the various published volumes 
and printed addresses of that gentleman, 
and which I should have been gratified to 



g6 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

have quoted In full had it not been for two 
considerations. Anything like liberal or 
literal quotation would, in the first place, 
have occupied entirely too much space ; 
and in the second place, have involved an 
infringement of the copyright monopolized 
by that gentleman, the purchase of which 
required an outlay of capital quite beyond 
my means. 

This picture of the condition of con- 
temporary labor, though presented only in 
miniature, is necessarily so black that I 
cannot resist the temptation to relieve it 
in a measure by recording in this place 
certain instances of material prosperity 
among the poor, which have by accident 
come to my notice. I am confident that 
in so doinor I shall win the o^ratitude of 
every intelligent and sympathetic reader. 
For I myself vividly remember what pleas- 
ure it was in a;iU belhu7i days to turn 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 97 

from the sickening recitals of the cruekies 
practiced in cotton-fields and rice-swamps 
to pleasant tales of slave-life on Kentucky 
plantations. It is, moreover, superfluous 
to state that the citation of these isolated 
cases is not made with any intention of 
lessening confidence in the veracity of that 
gentleman whose statements I have in sub- 
stance quoted. I could scarcely be expect- 
ed to impeach the credibility of my own 
witness, even for the laudable purpose of 
flattering my age and pleasing posterity. , 
I therefore desire to say, subject to the 
foregoing qualification, that to my certain 
knowledge six car-drivers in the city of 
New York possess heavy winter overcoats, 
and as many pile-drivers extra thick flan- 
nels, and that in the discharge of certain 
business duties I discovered, to my great 
gratification, that a dozen day-laborers re- 
ceive sufficiently high wages to keep their 



98 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

families supplied with fuel during the win- 
ter months. I am also ready to affirm that 
I have repeatedly read in a daily journal 
an advertisement offering work to such 
compositors as might apply at the office of 
the subscriber. I do not, however, place 
implicit confidence in the good faith of this 
advertisement, as it appeared in October 
of the past year, and may have been only 
a clever electioneering dodge, invented by 
the capitalists to impress the public with a 
totally erroneous view concerning the tra- 
ditional difficulties of the workman obtain- 
ing work. 

As has been stated above, these fruits 
of personal observation are in no wise 
intended to destroy confidence in the 
Champion of United Labor. It has, how- 
ever, been a pleasant task to record these 
evidences of occasional prosperity among 
a class whose condition must be viewed by 



INDUSTRIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 99 

posterity as infinitely more severe than 
that of the villein of the Middle Ages, 
and as accompanied with considerably 
greater hardships than that of the serf in 
Russia before the period of his emancipa- 
tion. 

Before dismissing this subject altogether, 
I desire to correct a totally wrong impres- 
sion which posterity may possibly receive 
from a perusal of much of our Anti-Pov- 
erty, United Labor, Central Labor, Social- 
istic and Anarchical literature. The con- 
spicuous absence of any allusion to female 
wage-workers in these journals might lead 
to the inference that in the present age no 
woman is required to earn her own living, 
or if so, that her services are so generous- 
ly paid that she has no cause for com- 
plaint. I am naturally loth to dissipate 
any such flattering reputation for chivalry, 
but the truth inexorably requires me to 



100 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

admit that there is a large class of noto- 
riously underpaid female wage-workers. 
The only possible explanation of the para- 
dox that five minutes' infraction of schedule 
time leads to a general tie-up, while the 
long hours and starvation wages of a 
seamstress provoke no comment, lies in 
the intimate connection between politics 
and philanthropy. The absolute worth- 
lessness of woman as a political factor is 
regarded as cancelling all her natural claims 
on ordinary humanity. I am not wholly 
without hope, however, that this defect, if 
defect it be, will be remedied in the future 
by the recognition of the indirect relation 
which women hold to politics as the pos- 
sible mothers of Walking Delegates. 

I have occupied so much space in dls- 
cussinor the moral and industrial condition 
of the age, that I can only briefly sketch 



SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. lOI 

our social customs and usages. Fortun- 
ately, the last-named subject will suffer no 
great injury if dismissed with scant notice. 
The proverb, though musty, is true, that 
nothing is so monotonous as fashion and 
sin, and that any effort to be original in 
either must necessarily prove a failure. 
The superficial forms of society are, in- 
deed, by no means permanent. I myself 
can remember many changes introduced 
during my own generation concerning 
questions of precedence, the proper attitude 
to be observed in saluting a lady, and the 
correct cut for a dress-suit. I have, how- 
ever, regarded such customs as of scarce- 
ly sufficient dignity to come within the 
scope of the present history. But that 
dread of ennui, hatred of solitude, and in- 
defatigable craving for amusement, which 
seeks relief indifferently in Browning Clubs, 
Palmistry entertainments, and Opera par- 



102 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

ties, can scarcely be claimed as original by 
the present age. I have, in fact, diligently 
searched for some expression of originality 
in our various social customs and usages, 
and failing to find any, shall dismiss this 
subject altogether, after making one or two 
cautionary suggestions for the benefit of 
posterity. 

I therefore desire to state at this point 
that what is technically known as our best 
society has succeeded in forming the ac- 
quaintance of not a few genuine members 
of the British aristocracy. I have deemed 
it prudent to make this statement, lest 
posterity might form a directly contrary 
opinion from reading the frequent accounts 
in contemporary journals of the ease with 
which needy adventurers successfully mas- 
querade as legitimate descendants of the 
Plantagenets before our American popula- 
tion. Such numerous instances of credulity 



SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 103 

might, in fact, lead to the unflattering- infer- 
ence that our people had never had an oppor- 
tunity to distinguish between the true and 
the false in this particular by the presence 
of a real member of the English peerage in 
their midst. This is not so. I am ready 
to make affidavit that H. R. H. Albert Ed- 
ward, Prince of Wales, Field Marshal, K. 
G., K. T., K. P., G. C. B., G. C. S. I., G. 
C. M. G., once visited us, for I myself saw 
him in an open barouche on Broadway, in 
the city of New York. Moreover, many 
elder sons of families tracing their pedigree 
to William the Conqueror, have made 
themselves so conspicuous by their vices 
or dullness, that the rumor of their pres- 
ence on American soil has reached even 
the seclusion in which I dwell. 

Although our society is severely demo- 
cratic in its structure, I would not have 
posterity imagine that we are so rude as to 



I04 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

be wholly without any system of caste. I 
feel that there is no need to call attention 
to that untitled nobility among us, which 
trace their descent in a direct or collateral 
line to some signer of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, or immigrant in the Mayflower. 
Such genealogical claims to social pre-emi- 
nence are sufficiently cosmopolitan to be 
easily understood. There is, however, one 
class distinction among us which, were it 
not specially noted by me, posterity might 
scarcely suspect existed in an age pre-emi- 
nently commercial, and a society peculiarly 
plutocratic. From a social point of view, 
there is a well-recocrnized difference be- 
tween selling goods at wholesale and re- 
tail. The vendor in the former case is 
a merchant ; in the latter a shopman. 
Although I can truthfully attest that this 
distinction is rigidly observed in excluding 
and receiving applicants for admission into 



SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 105 

society, I am forced to admit that there is 
considerable confusion in certain instances 
as to how much business makes the mer- 
chant, and how Httle the shopman. I am, 
for example, quite unable to specify, with 
any degree of exactness, how many hogs 
a man is required to slaughter, in the 
course of a year, in order to be removed 
from the vulgar plane of the butcher to 
the dignified level of a pork-packer. 

I shall venture to close this chapter with 
a statement which I greatly fear will pro- 
voke the derisive laughter of posterity. 
There are not only several colleges and 
universities in our country, but a goodly 
number of our population are extremely 
ambitious to have their sons educated at 
these institutions of learning. This will 
naturally seem incomprehensible to poster- 
ity, in view of the constant fire of ridicule 
to which all forms of higher education are 



I06 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

exposed In our current press. As an in- 
exhaustible source of wit, that subject bids 
fair, in fact, to rival the old standard one 
of the frailty and fickleness of woman. 
A comic paper is very poorly officered 
unless possessing an editor capable of ex- 
temporizing innumerable watty paragraphs 
at the expense of the college-bred youth, 
while no minstrel troupe is too ignorant to 
invent a gibe or jest at classical learning. 
It might reasonably be expected that this 
species of lunacy would long since have 
been laughed away. Yet it is incontesta- 
bly true, that not only the number of col- 
leges in the country, but their rates of at- 
tendance, are on the constant increase. I 
solemnly assure posterity that no joke is 
lurkincr in this last statement, and that it is 
made, not in the spirit of the farceiu', but 
in the character of the grave historian. I 
am, moreover, wholly unable to suggest 



SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE AGE. 10/ 

any explanation of such a paradoxical state 
of affairs. For it is universally conceded that 
a collegiate education entirely unfits a man 
for the duties of life, and that he has to 
painfully unlearn whatever he has acquired 
during his scholastic career. Nor is class- 
ical learning regarded as only interfering 
with the prospects of those destined for 
trade or commerce. It is also viewed as 
exerting a positively injurious influence 
over those entering what have been digni- 
fied as the learned professions. A critical 
familiarity with New-Testament Greek 
makes a clergyman dull and doctrinal, 
thereby putting an end to the most cher- 
ished hopes of his friends that he would 
become a great popular preacher. A phy- 
sician knowing more Latin than is sufficient 
to make his prescription intelligible to the 
apothecary, may win the equivocal reputa- 
tion of a student, but must never expect 



I08 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

to be a successful practitioner, while a ris- 
ing young lawyer could easily cultivate the 
acquaintance of all the politicians in his 
ward, in half the time required for the 
mastery of the Institutes of Justinian. 
Why parents have persisted, and still per- 
sist, in placing such a serious obstacle to 
success at the very outset of the career of 
their sons, I frankly admit I am unable to 
explain. 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 

I AM sensible that the classification of 
literature with law seems awkward and 
arbitrary, yet the heterogeneity existing 
between the two is, after all, only super- 
ficial. As there are certain tints which 
harmonize equally well with brilliant or 
quiet colors, so literature is of such a neu- 
tral character as to be suited to all profes- 
sions and pursuits. 

This peculiarity of literature is due to 
the fact that no special abilities or training 
are regarded as necessary for its success- 
ful cultivation. It would be difficult in- 
deed to find an individual so diffident as to 
hesitate to pass an extempoj'e judgment 
upon the rhythm of poetry, the subtleties 

of satire, the passion of oratory, and the 

(III) 



112 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

technique of tragedy, and who would not 
resent, as an imputation upon his natural 
intelligence, the suggestion that any special 
education might be required to intelligent- 
ly criticise such subjects. In this respect 
literature stands at a great disadvantage 
with base-ball, lawn-tennis, and roller skat- 
ing. The latter pursuits have all risen to 
the dignity of professions, whereas the 
former is viewed as occupying the level 
of an amateur recreation, which any and 
everybody may cultivate with equal ease 
and success. 

Again, literature is unique in that it has 
no special precincts wherein it is strictly 
lodged. Chemistry cannot flourish away 
from the fumes of a laboratory, and law 
withers outside the atmosphere of a court- 
room. But literature, like death, has all 
times, seasons, and places for its own. It 
is discussed in the halls of classic semi- 



LITERATURE AND LAW. II3 

naries of learning, co-operates with flirting 
in agreeably beguiling the tedious intervals 
between the dances of a ball, and figures 
prominently at afternoon teas. The super- 
ficial and the profound, the wise and the 
ignorant, the dull and the brilliant, ap- 
proach literature without a single trace of 
that diffidence so conspicuous in the dis- 
cussion of those subjects which are con- 
sidered of such dignity as to require the 
exclusive attention of the specialist. 

It must be apparent, in view of the 
above, that the classification of literature 
with law is not so arbitrary as might ap- 
pear at first blush. It might, I am willing 
to admit, have been classified with any 
other topic just as well. Had I had a 
chapter on cooking or agriculture, there 
would have been no impropriety in includ- 
ing it in that. The present classification 
has, however, been adopted because of the 



114 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

opportunity for alliteration which it affords. 
Nor is such a ground for classification so 
purely fanciful as to be unworthy of serious 
consideration. It is, at least, every whit as 
rational as many of the laws of association 
■which prevail In the present age. No two 
things, for instance, could seem to be more 
completely divorced than hosiery and lit- 
erature. Yet a goodly number of our 
population have discovered such an inti- 
mate connection between the two that they 
w^ould go through life without a library, 
unless they could purchase their books at 
the same counter with stocklnors and era- 

o 

vats. 

Having thus justified the scheme of 
classification adopted in the present chap- 
ter, I shall proceed to discuss each of the 
two subjects in their respective order. 

Not only from the large circulation 



LITERATURE AND LAW. II5 

which his books have attained, but upon 
the authority of a distinguished critic, am 
I able to assert that Tolstoi is the greatest 
living author, and that the second place 
must be given to M. Zola. It is naturally 
a mortification to be compelled to make 
such a confession, but it will serve as a 
convenient Detts ex 77iachind to introduce 
an explanation and thereby remove what 
might otherwise be regarded as a reproach 
to my age, by showing that such an unflat- 
terinof state of affairs is due to no lack 
of ability on the part of my contemporaries, 
but entirely to adverse circumstances. The 
persistent opposition to realism on the part 
of the Society for the Suppression of 
Vice must be held responsible for our 
inferiority in this direction. Under the 
present censorship of the press our Amer- 
ican authors are restricted to such vague 
and general descriptions of immorality as 



Il6 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 



would have severely shocked the Puritans, 
but which seem squeamish and prudish to 
those who have any acquaintance at all 
with Continental literature. I am obliged 
to confess that this Society impartially ap- 
plies the same rules to the publications of 
both home and foreign authors ; but then 
the latter have the benefit of what may be 
termed the principle of expurgation. I 
would, in view of this fact, request poster- 
ity to make a liberal allowance for our in- 
feriority to French and Russian novelists, 
as that principle seriously affects all liter- 
ary composition. For it is obvious that 
the restraint imposed by the observance of 
Puritan prejudices cannot but interfere with 
the cultivation of a fluent style. The corol- 
lary from such a proposition is equally self- 
evident. Althouorh the works of foreign 
authors are subjected to a process of ex- 
purgation for the j^urpose of adapting them 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 1 17 



to the American market, their inimitable 
traits of freedom and ease cannot be de- 
stroyed, and that artificial restraint which is 
such a conspicuous fault of our home au- 
thors is wholly absent. The difference is 
the same as that which results from prun- 
ing off the luxuriant branches of a full- 
grown tree, and forcing a shrub to grow 
according to a prescribed model, as was 
actually done with many of the plants in 
the gardens of Versailles. In the former 
case there is grace and naturalism in spite 
of the missing limbs ; in the latter only 
rigidity and a painful formality. 

Candor, however, requires it to be said, 
that the authors themselves are in a measure 
responsible for this inferior condition of the 
American novel. They are too jocund and 
blithe in their temperament. Their works 
are spoiled, beyond all remedy, by too 
much faith and optimism for an age which 



Il8 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

has such an intense craving for pessimism 
as to be satisfied with nothinof short of ab- 
solute despair. Nor can I pretend to as- 
sign the cause for this bHght of optimism 
wherewith American novelists are plagued. 
It may be due to too much morality, or 
again to too little dyspepsia. But of one 
thing I am certain. An optimistic novel 
is regarded like stage-coaches, kerosene 
lamps, and spinning-wheels, as belonging, 
beyond all hope of revival, to a past age. 

Again, American poets, with one possi- 
ble exception, labor under the serious dis- 
advantage of having only a constituency, 
and not a cult. The difference between 
the two is very marked. The purpose of 
a cult is to clear up obscurities in an au- 
thor's text, and consequently the delight 
of the cult is in exact proportion to the ob- 
scurity of the author. A constituency has 
no such object in view, but reads for either 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 1 19 

instruction or amusement, and is apt to be 
very intolerant of an author whose meaning 
is not perfectly apparent at a glance. I 
am quite convinced that this disadvanta- 
geous position of our American poets is 
not entirely due to their inability to be dull 
and obscure, but that quite another reason 
must be assigned for it. No one can know 
better than the American author how fu- 
tile it would be under our present inquis- 
itive system of journalism to cultivate ob- 
scurity of style and thought for the purpose 
of obtainino- a cult. Nothinor under the 
sun, with the exception of the proceedings 
of the United States Senate in executive 
session, can be long hid from the reporters. 
Editorial enterprise would be sure to dis- 
cover or invent a satisfactory explanation 
of the most abstruse poem before the cult 
could gather sufficient material to justify 
its existence. 



120 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

Although I entertain strong hopes that 
the present deplorable state of affairs may 
be speedily remedied, I nevertheless desire 
to earnestly impress upon posterity that 
the sole way in which the competition be- 
tween American and foreio-n authors can 
be placed on an impartial footing, is not, 
as many of my contemporaries imagine, 
by the passage of an international copy- 
right law, but by a revision of the Penal 
Code in the interest of realism, and the as- 
siduous cultivation by the authors them- 
selves of pessimism and a cult. 

It is pleasant to be able to turn from this 
account of the general state of American 
literature, which candor has required to be 
disparaging in a measure, and record that, 
in that special department of scholarship 
technically known as the Higher Criticism, 
an American author has recently surpassed 
all foreign competitors. German scholars 



LITERATURE AND LAW. I2I 

had heretofore, by their daring attacks 
upon Plato and the Pentateuch, entirely 
monopolized this branch of literary com- 
position. In fact, the researches of Schleier- 
macher, Ast, Socher, K. F. Hermann, Stein- 
hart, Susemihl, and Ueberweg, concerning 
the former, and those of Kuenen, Well- 
hausen, Reuss, Schultz, Kautzsch, Stade, 
and Konig in regard to the latter, had led 
to the impression that Higher Criticism 
was so indigenous to Germany that it could 
not flourish in any other soil. It is with 
feelings of just pride that I certify, in this 
place, that not only is this not so, but that 
that species of Higher Criticism which is 
peculiarly American is equally exact, schol- 
arly, and penetrating as the Teutonic, and 
infinitely more novel and daring in its aim 
and scope. Germany had been content 
with impeaching the authenticity of the 
Pentateuch, and revising the Alexandrine 



122 THE AGE OF CLEVELAKD. 

Canon — subjects of equal antiquity with 
the Pyramids — whereas, it was reserved 
for an American to successfully question 
the imputed authorship of plays which had 
been in existence considerably less than 
three centuries. In the former case, it is 
possible for the critic to bewilder the reader 
by a showy exhibition of that ponderous 
scholarship which the examination of the 
works of antiquity requires. In the latter, 
attention cannot be cleverly diverted from 
the only point at issue by learned digres- 
sions on the proper use of the digamma, 
or the relation of vowel-points to author- 
ship. The difference must strike every 
intelligent observer as being exactly anal- 
ogous to that which exists between those 
prestidigitateurs who, separated from their 
audience by the intervention of an orches- 
tra and footlights, require all the accesso- 
ries of stage machinery for the performance 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 1 23 

of their tricks, and those clever jugglers 
who swallow needles and knives in the 
open air, and in the very centre of a gap- 
ing and admiring crowd. As the palm in 
legerdemain must assuredly be given to 
the latter, so, by parity of reasoning, supe- 
riority in the use of the Higher Criticism 
must be allowed to Mr. Ignatius Donnelly. 
I am conscious of the necessity for curb- 
ing my pardonable enthusiasm so as not 
to exaggerate the praise which is the legit- 
imate guerdon of that gentleman. I am 
perfectly willing to admit that Poe's clever 
story of the Gold Bug, and the investiga- 
tions of the Potter Committee may have 
suggested to him the skilful use which may 
be made of cryptographs and ciphers, so 
that perhaps his modus operandi was not 
strictly original. But what I desire to em- 
phasize is the daring and novel application 
which he has made of the principles of the 



124 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

Higher Criticism. There would have been 
no novelty in his method had he selected 
as a subject the Homeric Myth, the Epis- 
tles of Phaleris, or Pentateuchal legislation. 
Such subjects have been discussed so fre- 
quently by prime ministers, diplomats, and 
divines as to be practically exhausted. But 
to prove by the Higher Criticism that that 
man was a forger who is the most revered 
of all English authors, whose statue adorns 
Central Park, whose plays are annually 
performed in many of our larger cities, 
whose birthplace was the only fixture in 
the whole United Kingdom, which, with 
the exception of Jumbo, Americans ever 
desired to import — such daring, novel, un- 
precedented use of the Higher Criticism 
proves conclusively to me, at least, that 
the present era of American literature, in 
spite of the conspicuous absence of pes- 
simistic novelists and poets with a cult, is 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 12$ 

destined to occupy a brilliant position in 
the literary history of the world. 

I have considered it superfluous to even 
indicate the substance of Mr. Donnelly's 
Higher Criticism. To future generations 
it will be a twice-told tale. I have, how- 
ever, deemed it prudent, for the reputation 
of my age, to thus strongly emphasize the 
date of its original authorship. Time 
brings many jealousies in her train, and the 
future very grudgingly ^aelds the credit of 
valuable discoveries to the past. As this 
application of the Higher Criticism to 
modern authorship inaugurated by Mr. 
Donnelly will be widely imitated, it is wise 
to thus definitely show that its origin must 
be sought in the Aofe of Cleveland. For 
I am quite convinced that it will be proven, 
at no distant time, that the Duke of Wei- 
mar was the real author of '' Faust," and that 
Sir William Temple composed the *' Tale of 



126 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

a Tub." Nay, I will venture to predict, 
that scarce half a century can elapse be- 
fore it is demonstrated that Inspector Will- 
iams, and not Inspector Byrnes, was the 
collaborateur with Mr. Julian Hawthorn of 
"An American Penman," and ''A Tragic 
Mystery," and that these works, ignorantly 
viewed by contemporary society as having 
been written with no higher purpose than 
to amuse, were intended, as a matter of 
fact, to be a valuable contribution to the 
literature of municipal politics by contain- 
ing in cipher the only complete and au- 
thentic account in existence of the secret 
history of removals and promotions in the 
Police Board. 

Two considerations, quite apart from 
the proverbial dryness of legal topics, have 
influenced me to avoid any detailed dis- 
cussion of the condition of the law during 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 12/ 

the present age. In the first place, it is 
naturally impossible for a layman to com- 
press such a vast body of statutes and 
precedents within anything like a reason- 
able compass, nor have I been able to find 
a single member of the bar who would ac- 
cept a retainer to do the same, and give 
me a written guarantee that the result of 
his labors would be intelligible to anybody 
except a judge of thirty years' experience 
on the bench. But that which has chiefly 
deterred me is the consideration that, even 
if I did attempt some faulty and awkward di^ 
gest of our present laws, or employed some 
attorney to do it for me, the task would be 
toil wholly wasted. For I am quite con- 
vinced that if this book is read by posterity, 
codification shall by that time have wholly 
supplanted the present use of the Common 
Law. By this means, the tangled maze of 
customs, statutes, and precedents whereby 



128 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

contracts, torts, and crimes are now de- 
fined, as well as the laws of procedure in 
civil and criminal cases, will be made quite 
intelligible to every layman of average in- 
telli2:ence — somethinor to which the most 
experienced lawyer in the land would not 
now pretend. I am, moreover, pretty well 
convinced that that unfailincr crood-nature 
of our legislators, which keeps them from 
passing any bill of a very positive charac- 
ter, for fear of giving offence to some con- 
stituent, may be relied upon to transmit to 
posterity the entire body of our present 
laws, without any material alteration. One 
incidental result of codification will, there- 
fore, be to present, in a systematic and 
lucid fashion, and with sufficient exactitude 
for the purposes of the antiquarian of the 
future, what exists in the present age in an 
obscure and chaotic state. 

But there is a certain class of obiter 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 1 29 

dicta which will not, in all likelihood, find 
a place in the codes of the future. Al- 
though not rising to the dignity of prece- 
dents, a familiarity with them is necessary, 
in order to intelligently comprehend many 
phases of contemporaneous legislation, and 
it is for this reason that I propose to re- 
cord them at the close of the present 
chapter. 

In the first place, I wish to give an exact 
definition of the term, ''The City and 
County of New York." This grandilo- 
quent phrase may possibly mislead poster- 
ity into conceiving of a municipality auton- 
omous to the extent of havinof exclusive 
authority in all matters of a purely local 
nature. Such a conception would not only 
tend to much confusion in many instances, 
but do a positive injury to many innocent 
citizens by holding them responsible for 
matters over which they had absolutely no 



I30 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

control. It is therefore eminent])^ proper 
to state, that the territory and municipahty 
of the City and County of New York are 
separated from each other by a considera- 
ble distance. The former is situated on 
Manhattan Island ; the latter is located in 
an entirely different place. In this particular 
instance, there is a marked difference be- 
tween the foreign and domestic policy of 
both the Republican and Democratic par- 
ties. Both unite in advocatinor Home Rule 
for Ireland, and both insist, with equal firm- 
ness, that New York shall be governed 
from Albany. Posterity must not infer 
from the above that there is not even the 
semblance of a regular city government. 
At stated intervals elections are held for a 
Mayor, Board of Aldermen, and other 
public officials, who succeed in investing 
themselves with sufficient bureaucratic 
functions to give at times the impression 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 13 1 

that they constitute an actual, and not sim- 
ply a nominal, municipality. Nor are these 
city offices, though in a measure unnec- 
essary, wholly destitute of importance. 
Whenever any of them are abolished by 
the municipality at Albany, the state and 
national campaign fund incurs a corre- 
sponding decrease, the very existence of 
which would be seriously jeopardized were 
they abolished altogether ; while the mem- 
ory of St. Patrick would suffer a consider- 
able loss of dignity, were there no Alder- 
manic Chamber to regularly adjourn on 
the seventeenth of March, out of respect 
for the day. 

I am sincerely anxious that the gratify- 
ing reputation for opposition to official 
jobbery and corruption recently secured to 
my age by the conviction of the Broad- 
way bribe-takers may survive the present 
century at least. I therefore appreciate the 



132 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

importance of exactly acquainting- posterity 
with what is now reorarded as constituting 
the crime of askinor or receivinof a bribe. 
All mole-hills seem equally small when 
viewed by the naked eye, but a percepti- 
ble difference can be noted in their height 
when submitted to a closer inspection 
under the microscope. Just so, while many 
gratuities may seem equally corrupt to the 
unaided eye of morality, a difference be- 
tween a priori and ex post facto bribery 
can be easily detected through the lens of 
the law. Moreover, not only is there such 
a difference, but different names are ap- 
plied to each. The former is called a 
felony, the latter a perquisite. I feel the 
fullest assurance that posterity, if the fore- 
going distinction is only kept constantly in 
view, "will find no difficulty in lauding the 
present age as the stern and unrelenting 
foe of official bribe-taking. 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 1 33 

I cannot close this chapter more appro- 
priately than with a partial explanation of 
the anomalous position occupied by cor- 
porations in the present age. The ex- 
planation can be only partial, because I 
can urge no sufficient reason why corpora- 
tions are allowed such enormous privileges. 
They were originally granted, I believe, 
on the theory that the recipients were a 
benefit to the public, and therefore deserv- 
ing of encouragement. But the actual 
hostility of corporations to the common 
weal has become so notorious that even 
the inexhaustible resources of the law have 
been insufficient to preserve that fiction 
any longer. I must therefore frankly ad- 
mit my inability to explain this aspect of 
the subject. I am, however, more fortun- 
ate in being able to offer an explanation 
of the narrow limit fixed to the liabilities 
of corporations. They were long since 



134 THE AGE OF CLEVELAND. 

decided to have no souls, and are, there- 
fore, unable to distinguish any more than 
a cat or a doof between rio^ht and wroncr. 
It would, consequently, be absurd to im- 
pose upon them anything like moral re- 
sponsibility. It, moreover, I must confess, 
seems illogical in the extreme that, in view 
of the recent discoveries of science, which 
have been noted in a previous chapter, the 
same license which is allowed to corpora- 
tions has not been extended to natural as 
well as artificial persons. It is to be hoped 
that the biological conception of the uni- 
verse may speedily receive judicial notice, 
whereby both these classes may obtain the 
benefit of that limited liability, which is at 
present monopolized by one of them. For 
men, women, and even children are now 
held to a strict account for erecting and 
maintaining nuisances; the commission of 
grand or petit larceny; and such acts of 



LITERATURE AND LAW. 1 35 

criminal carelessness as result in injury to 
the life, limb, or property of another, — all 
of which is a monstrous injustice, when 
science has conclusively demonstrated that 
they also, like corporations, have no souls. 








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